Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sunday October 16, 2005 @04:33AM
from the lots-of-happy-people-made-happier dept.

Harlan writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are claiming that high doses of cannabinoids have induced new brain cell growth in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory, in rat subjects. There are some interesting potential implications in regards to high doses of cannabinoids found in substances like marijuana."

The mentioned research used 'canaboids', which is a group of componds resembling those found in cannabis(THC). It was already known that the brain uses neurotransmitters that are in the form of canaboids and it contains several types of receptor for it, just like opiates have human equivalents in the form of endorfines.But similar results done with THC (Tetra Hydro Cannabinol), the main compound in hash and weed have found no evidence for this cellgrowth stimulation. So let's not jump for joy yet. One experiment/paper does not mean it has been accepted as scientific fact yet.Besides, you can be sure that with such a hot subject and the way research is financed/politiced there will be more research 'debunking' this even if it turns out to be true after all.

Actually, the research talks about "cannabinoids." Cannabinoids are the primary psychoactive alkaloids contained in cannabis, of which, THC is the most concentrated in most strains, although each strain contains different levels of each. THC is a cannabinoid so it likely has very similar pharmacological effects as HU-210.

Not that I want to debunk those results or anything, but saying that two similar substances of the same kind have the same effect would also imply that ethanol and methanol would have roughly the same effect. I doubt there is anyone on Slashdot who doesn't know the difference, though.

that's a bad analogy. we're not talking about two substances that simply have similar chemical properties. we're talking about two alkaloids that have similar pharmacological properties. a closer analogy would be comparing two different kinds of exogenous opioids like diacetylmorphine(heroin) and morphine, or codeine and morphine, or a fentanyl analog and morphine, etc., all of which activate a shared set of receptors in the brain. cannabinoids also share a lot of common receptor sites with each other--by d

I don't think it's such a bad analogy. There are plenty of antiestrogrens that are extremely close in structure to estrogen, and in vivo have effects on some types of estrogen receptors that are antiestrogen and proestrogen effects on other estrogen receptor subtypes.

On the other hand if you did want to debunk the results then their methodology would be a good place to start. The cell growth is implied by the rats reduced reluctance to eat in new surroundings. They're basing this on the fact that the rats ate more. Seriously. Has anyone done a study on whether or not rats get munchies from artificial cannabinoids?

They found that giving rats high doses of HU210 twice a day for 10 days increased the rate of nerve cell formation, or neurogenesis, in the hippocampus by about 40%.

Are you still sure that the only method they used was injecting cannabinoids and measuring how much they ate?

I guess that experiment is an accepted test for anxiety, and prozac cum suis scores very good on it. Science gets better if you use standard test where you can. Even though your 'munchies' hypothesis sounds plausible, it still cannot explain the neurogenesis bit.

I read this feed on forbes [forbes.com] three days ago. It contains more information, including: "Autopsies revealed that by the end of the 10-day HU210 treatment regimen, new neurons had been generated and integrated into the circuitry of the hippocampus region of the rat's brains. This process, known as neurogenesis, was still in evidence a full month after treatment had been initiated."

So you see, they're actually basing it on autopsies, which tend to involve cutting open dead creatures and poking around their inside

Ethanol and Methanol DO have roughly the same effect. You get the same intoxication from both of them. What kills you is not the methanol intoxication but the methanol hangover.

Methanol is metabolized by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) via formaldehyde to formic acid, being responsible for the metabolic acidosis in methanol poisoning.

That's why ethanol is given as a cure for methanol poisoning; by adding ethanol to the bloodstream the metabolization rate of methanol decreases as the body will also metabolize ethanol, and thus the level of toxic methanol byproducts in the blood will be kept at a non-lethal level.

How else can such a comment come from someone whose nick is the chemical name for LSD:-)You are right, i made a typo, cannabinoids it is. And yes other cannaboids occur in cannabis too.But your assumption that because they are in the same group they must have the same phamacological properties is a bit of the mark. To have the same properties it must bind to the same receptors in the same amounts. There these small difference with extra groups may make a big difference how the molecule actually fits. An ex

Most people who are new to cannabis have short term memory problems while high. My >cough friend would get halfway through some brilliant philosophical conversation and then forget what he was talking about, for instance. People who do a lot of cannabis seem to get over this problem. Perhaps the brain is compensating for the memory impairment while high by building strengthening itself.

Did you read the article? That is where I got my info from.And FYI: the aargument was if cannabis causes brain cell growth, not if weed is good or bad.And as for my bias: I've grown about a kilo of the stuff over the years. Does that make my bias clear?

In another study, Barry Jacobs, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, gave mice the natural cannabinoid found in marijuana, THC (D9-tetrahydrocannabinol)). But he says he detected no neurogenesis, no matter what dose he gave or the length of time he gave it for. From this [newscientist.com] New Scientist article.

But it may go a ways to debunking the theory that pot destroys your memory and kills your brain.

That theory has been debunked a long time ago. It's just popular myth that pot destroys brain cells. You'll hear all kinds of propoganda from anti-drug groups. What people don't understand (other than scientists who actually study marijuana) is that marijuana is very different from other drugs. In fact some scientists hesitate to call it a drug. Marijuana does not have a direct affect on dopamine levels l

Thurgood Jenkins: The MacGyver smoker is a very handy guy to have around, especially when it comes to reefer.McGayver Friend: Hey, man, we're out of papers.McGayver Smoker: All right. Then get me a toilet paper roll, a corkscrew and some tin foil.McGayver Friend: We don't have a corkscrew.McGayver Smoker: All right. Then get me an avocado, an ice pick and my snorkel.McGayver Smoker: [Friend looks at him funny] Trust me, bro. I've made bongs with less. Hurry up!

This is just my observation but when a persons health fails in old age, a key factor seems to be failure in the nervous system. I had a great aunt who lived five years after a stroke. Her body went downhill because her brain wasn't running the show properly.

So I think treatments which can help revive the brain can also help other systems in the body.

And it is the only organ which can not be replaced in some way by machinery.

Your brain learns both by creating connections and by deleting them. If you create to many new connections you can't thnk straight. Everything gets too connected and you can't resolve your thoughts. You have to prune nodes to be able to think effciently and to focus.

Thus your comment is right on.

Clearly the only solultion is to first smoke loads of weed to build up your brains connecitons, and then huff gasoline to prune them back to a useful level. Then you will be a super genius.

Kids basing decisions on scientific studies - even if those contradict our belief systems and/or values [or those of our corporate overlords] - is still better than that children are kept in ignorance.

Actually, this applies to all people, not just kids. Take global warming as an example.

And if the stuff were legal (and therefore cheaper), you wouldn't NEED to inhale like that to milk every last bit of THC from each hit.

Hell, you wouldn't need to SMOKE the stuff in the first place. Eating it gets you high, too. But you need to use a lot more of it than you would smoke. So economics tend to dictate the most harmful route of ingetsion...

The team injected laboratory rats with a synthetic substance called HU-210, which is similar, but 100 times as potent as THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the compound responsible for giving marijuana users a high.

Clearly my dealer has been lying to me. He swore there was nothing stronger than his stuff. Where do I get HU-210?..or better yet, how do I make it?

It seems to slam short-term memory immediately after you've smoked it, but everything bounces back. I've maintained for years that my mind is more powerful thanks to the all the psychedelics I've had over the years. People will of course laugh at me, but I respectfully think I'm in the better position to be judging that. I've actually noticed a nice increase in performance, not to mention scope.

I've maintained for years that my mind is more powerful thanks to the all the psychedelics I've had over the years.

When I was 19 I developed a siezure disorder and needed to have a CT scan. The radiologist connected me to an IV containing something which he claimed would make me feel slightly warm. What is did was convince me that my mind really was "more powerful" than anything in the known universe. For about three hours anyway.

Looking back, I don't think the experience made me any smarter. That one exp

What the AC above is actually saying is that a single point of data is anecdotal. it is not possible to extrapolate (or intrerpolate) a trend without (at least) 2 points of data. The more data points you have the more accurately new data can be infered. The AC never said anything that you should have taken as "right wing", unless you consider empirical(sp?) evide

TR-446 Toxicology and Carcinogenesis Studies of 1-Trans-Delta9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (CAS No. 1972-08-3) in F344 Rats and B6C3F1 Mice (Gavage Studies)http://www.cannabis.com/research/tr446study.shtml [cannabis.com](mirror of the study published by the U.S. National Toxicity Program)

It doesn't matter whatever medicinal uses it has. If it were shown to regrow hair, prolong erections, and cure prostate cancer, it would still be treated as an evil drug. The pharmaceutical companies would find the key curative ingredients and find aritficial derivative that could be patented. Drug companies do not want people to have a wonderdrug they can grow in their own backyard. It's bad for business. Furthermore, from the conservative politician viewpoint, it would be especially bad for the War on Dru

They can cure diabetes in rats, they can grow organs in rats, now they can increase the rat brain. Still it does not mean much to us, none of these works in humans yet. Rats are similar but not identical.

Yeah I know, in Soviet Russia communism was first tested on humans before being tested on rats.

One of the things that happens to brains is that they shed brain cells as they go from birth to maturity. No doubt there may be some loss of neural plasticity, but it's also correlated to increasing cognitive development.If I recall (this is very old stuff for me), my neuroscience teacher mentioned that young brains sometimes grow new neural connections in response to trauma. However, the results of this were not necessarily good -- it in itself might be a kind of damage.

I have a novel idea. How about we drop all the bullshit and political posturing and move directly to deregulation?

Nearly every single large medical study of marijuana has had its funding denied, or its license for the controlled substance denied, or any of dozens of other reasons to keep the study mummied in red tape. If people are working so hard to hide something then the most logical answer is probably the opposite. In this case: marijuana has little or no effect on anything, all negative social perceptions are due to years of wrongful regulation, all ill effects are circumstantial correlations, and the only reason for the continued illegality is the complete inability to admit that the government has ever made a mistake. PR and ego--no different than telling your manager he's wrong.

When you have to struggle to remember what you and your bong bud have just been talking about, it makes sense that you'd have to exercise your brain's memory regions. Smoking pot is like walking with leg weights -- it's harder to do when you have them on, but when they come off you're stronger for the extra effort you exerted.

It seems that all the intelligent people I've met understand the the War on Drugs is a total snipe hunt.

As long as their is demand, there will be a market.

The fundemental question seems to be:Is the government trying to punish marijuana smokers or educate them?

More than 60% of all drug incarcerations are for non-violent possesion of marijuana.

As a rational individual, it seems obvioius that their current tactics only succeed in punishing marijuana smokers. Actual use of marijuana is at the same levels or higher than it has ever been so as a preventive, prohibition has most definitely failed. The supply of marijuana is greater than ever and the potency is higher too. The DEA says this to scare the uninformed. They attempt to create the analogy that stronger means greater threat. In reality, stronger means that pot heads have to consume less marijuana to get high. So in reality, higher potency means healthier pot smokers. Who do you believe the DEA with their vested interest in maintaining the status quo or an independent organization of scientists and medical researchers, the esteemed World Health Organization. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/general/w ho-index.htm [druglibrary.org]

If anything prohibition has made the problem worse. Prohibition tends to create a black market which opens the door for large scale criminal organizations. Examples of these are the Mafia ( very small organization until their massive growth thanks to alcohol prohibition), the Latin & South American drug cartels in the '80's, and of course the DEA.http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/ [prohibitioncosts.org]http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html [cato.org]

If you read TFA you'd have read that the original publication is due to be released in JCI, a peer reviwed journal that is quite high impact. Not Nature or Science, but not the Ulan Bator Journal of Basket Weaving Medicine either.

where I live head-shops are called smart-shops and sell mild magic-mushrooms and all manner of mostly piss-weak hallucinogens and rubbish like gurana power. in coffe shops you buy grass and hash off a weed-cart which is a menu, not a trolley. in cafes you can buy coffee, although most coffee-shops do sell coffee as well as weed and hash and space-cake. some even sell alcohol too. very few sell food. I am not sure why someone doesn't just set up a cafe that sells grass, hash and serves good food, beer, win

Yes, please do. I'm interested to see how many opinion pieces you're going to offer up as clinical proof. And "Phytohemagglutinin-Induced Lymphocyte Transformation in Humans Receiving..."? That's no more conclusive about marijuana use than the topic article which works on rat brains.

Please. Tout the FUD in a forum where there isn't a pharmaceutical scientist available to tell you you're full of horse-pooey.

Its interesting that someone as obviously intelligent as yourself would site the previous studies about marijuana effects, compare them to this single study and then cut a withering remark about the end of the party for 'hippies', because of course they're the only people who smoke marijuana, but then you go and...

Fuck it all up by leaving a sig that suggests you enjoy alcohol abuse but justify it as medication. I have a lot of friends who have had marijuana problems but by the later stages of their lives they've left it behind. But anyone Ive ever known with alcohol problems struggles with it their whole lives until their liver pickles itself.

i noticed the point of the alcohol-enduced-sig, and wanted to comment, but you beat me to it... i've never known anyone to get high and oh, say, beat their wife, or wreck head-on at 90mph racing down roads, or even really do much of ANYTHING. the "party isn't over for hippies"... but i do know a multiple-sclerosis patient or two that enjoy a good toke, and, and my-chemo-therapy-buddy, he likes it too... not that i'm AGAINST alcohol in any real way/shape/form, but the evils associated therein are far more harmful to yourself, your family, your life, and everyone around you (especially when operating a motor vehicle)... i'd rather there be 100 stoners driving 35mph in a 60, scared out of their minds, than a single red-neck drunk on jack daniels showing you exactly how manuverable his F-350 is.

I have seen some friends of mine who started smoking... Now they suffer from very short attention span

Did you ever consider that perhaps their chosen path in life has anything to do with this, regardless of the marijuana usage? Some people are, just naturally, not going to make it very far in life. What they do or don't do in terms of drug usage makes little or no difference. That's like pointing to all the blue collar workers and saying,"See! They all live in the city and they're not CEOs! If they

Alcohol can be dangerous, as well, I agree on this. But 100 stoners driving are *bound* to have accidents because their reflexes are so slow.

That would go counter to all of the studies into the subject. The 'drug free America' guys once funded a study on this, to try and promote this idea. The results didn't go their way and they quietly buried the study.

Alcohol fucks your driving up because your risk assessment is broken. Pot does not have that issue, in fact its the opposite. People take less chance

Well let's start with Fried et. al. [www.cmaj.ca], who concluded that ongoing heavy use of marijuana has a signficant negative impact on IQ.

(I think I can afford a few IQ points, better a little dimmer and a lot happier than a little brighter but a lot more misrable...)

And then we can in fact see the short term memory impairment,Heyser, C.J.; Hampson, R.E.; and Deadwyler, S.A. Effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol on delayed match to sample performance in rats: Alterations in short-term memory associated with changes in task-specific firing of hippocampal cells. Journal of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics 264(1):294-307, 1993.

(The research is also not conclusive. Also just about all research sponsored by the USA federal government has to be bent toward proving cannabis harmful. SO just about any research from the USA is politically tainted by its ideological war...pawn that you are you parrot it.

(In already vulnerable persons. The threshold for 'psychosis' is very low... Evangelicals are a more psychotic sometimes...)

The original poster was talking about chronic use, implying ongoing, so let's also examine the effects of current intoxication: Learning and memory are in fact impaired by cannabis:Grant, Igor, et al.,(2003) "Non-Acute (Residual) Neurocognitive Effects Of Cannabis Use: A Meta-Analytic Study," Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. Cambridge University Press, 9, p. 685.

Long term permanent damage? Absolutely, but only to the lungs.

(I support legalising cannabis and even I wouldnt make that sweeping generalization. It is likely you are correct however.)

Negative impacts on the brain during ongoing use? Absolutely.

(Define negative impact? Obviously millions feel its acceptable.)

Maybe you ought to be familiar with the research yourself before attacking other people? This is just a tiny fraction of all the research conducted. A simple 5 second google search would have turned up all you needed to know to not look like the jackass you do now.

(Maybe if the state arbitrarily named you a criminal for burning some plant matter, you would be defensive when people parrot the drug war lies?)

Current marijuana use had a negative effect on global IQ score only in subjects who smoked 5 or more joints per week. A negative effect was not observed among subjects who had previously been heavy users but were no longer using the substance. We conclude that marijuana does not have a long-term negative impact on global intelligence. [emphasis added]

As for the hyperbole of your other claims, let's dispose of them by referring to the most-widely used medical textbook in the world, The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy [merck.com] entry on marijuana:

Critics of marijuana cite much scientific data regarding adverse effects, but most of the claims regarding severe biologic impact are unsubstantiated, even among relatively heavy users and in areas intensively investigated, such as immunologic and reproductive function. However, high-dose smokers of marijuana develop pulmonary symptoms (episodes of acute bronchitis, wheezing, coughing, and increased phlegm), and pulmonary function may be altered. This is manifested by large airway changes of unknown significance. Even daily smokers do not develop obstructive airway disease. Pulmonary carcinoma has not been reported in persons who smoke only marijuana, possibly because less smoke is inhaled than during cigarette smoking. However, biopsies of bronchial tissue sometimes show precancerous changes, so carcinoma may occur. In a few case-control studies, some tests detected diminished cognitive function in small samples of long-term high-dose users; this finding awaits confirmation. Studies in newborns have not found evidence of fetal harm due to maternal use of cannabis. Decreased fetal weight has been reported, but when all factors (eg, maternal alcohol and tobacco use) are accounted for, the effect on fetal weight disappears. delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol is secreted in breast milk. Although no harm to breastfed babies has been shown, breastfeeding mothers, like pregnant women, are advised to avoid using cannabis.
[emphasis added]

Btw, I am not sure why you have to call the poster you are responding to names. Seems like your arguments should be able to stand on their own.

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

Does cannabis have a benificial effect well i think this is a question best answered by people who made thier choices in thier teens early 20's and are now living with the concequences.smoking at 13 i feel sorry for your messed up childhood.

I can only speak about the people I know or Knew and my own experience.

habitual use of any drug is harmful. If you can't manage without using any recreational drug for lets say a month then you need to look at why this is. Change your life make choices try and have a ben

I smoked pot because I thought it was doing no damage to my brain. Had I known that it was doing permeanent damage

I don't believe you have any brain damage at all. Any hard times you're experiencing in your life are due entirely to your own decisions in life and are in no way due to a plant. Many poor aspects of life may be exacerbated by the state if you were caught smoking marijuana. Do not blame on marijuana what is purely an artificial situation constructed by ignorant politicians.

honestly can you say that getting stoned regularly doesn't cause a lot of people to put off making choices

I can honestly say that the decision making process becomes reprioritized. Many people try to make too many choices. In many ways smoking marijuana may help you decide what's really important. Some people spend their lives "drifting through life", as you put it, but that's probably what they always wanted to do anyway. Other people smoke marijuana and become enormously productive and creative.

I don't believe grass has any worse effect than any other freely available substance (cigarettes, alcohol).God forbid someone smoke a joint to take the edge off. A lot of people on Paxil and similar drugs would probably benefit from a little grass. The difference is that the long-term effects of grass are well understood. Who knows what they'll find out about other antidepressants and anxiety medications in 10 or 20 years, and take about dulling the brain.

And, is our world really that much better, societally, than the late 1800s? Back then, cocaine was in Coca-Cola, pot was legal, heroin was used medically, and nobody was in jail for altering their own mind.

Sure, you could say that today is much more dangerous because we have cars all over the place, but that doesn't mean that I am any more a danger sitting in my apartment getting stoned and watching the Matrix (or just sufferring from glaucoma). Sure, if I g

Have you considered the effect of the social and legal stigma associated with the state's position on those substances? Really. Economic position is just as much, if not more, an effect of the state and not an effect inherent in any particular habit.

then "stoners" seems to have a long way to go

You're profiling stoners as those down and out people who are always having problems in life. 1) There are plenty of non-users who fit this

While we're at it with the anonymous confessions I feel the need to chime in.

Several years ago I met a man in his early 50's, proper, intelligent, well employed and whatnot. After a good many beers he confided to me that he had been smoking weed since his early 20's, and that his son actually didn't know about it until he had turned 18, when he boldly proclaimed to his father that he had tried smoking and was prepared to stand up for it. Good laugh that.

In my experience, I've found marijuana to be a miracle when it comes to writing/debugging code. If I find I'm driving myself nuts, I'll take a break and a few hits - suddenly, that little problem I couldn't figure out before might as well be waving at me.

"I'm not surprised that injecting lab rats with a twice as potent THC like substance spurred neuron generation,"
Interesting to note that those who habitually smoke Marijuana misread "100 times" as "double".

Yes, it would make more sense if they misread it as "4 times as potent" in binary. I think the problem is that with more brain cells receiving random or mistuned stimulation, you would learn "better" but a lot of what you would learn is crap.

That's largely a myth, promoted by the wine industry. Truth is, red wine can benefit a small proportion of the population that have a specific blood chemistry. I believe that the benefit is the thinning of the blood, but don't quote me on that.

Everyone tends to think of themselves as the exception, that they are in control. In reality they are not, their judgment has diminished to the point, that they think they are actually better than before.

I think you can say this pretty much about anything. The person who needs their coffee because it helps them wake up, the person who needs their prozac because it helps them calm down, the kids who need their ADD medicine because it helps them concentrate.